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Monday, November 9, 2009

Funny Little Bunnies

Funny Little Bunnies is not for the faint of heart. I’ll be honest, if you can overload on cuteness, you should avoid this short at all costs. This is quite possibly the most cutesy short ever made by any cartoon company. Disney merchandising today would have bunny plush throughout the land if this one was a hit.

The short itself starts from a good place – Easter. It purports to be an inside look into the world of Easter bunnies as they get ready for the holiday. As such, it’s a good companion piece to Santa’s Workshop, in that it shows how the holiday comes to pass. But the bunnies and their antics are too much.

You might get the impression from this that I did not like the short, which is not the case. It’s just way too much with the cute little bunnies. The bunnies go through all sorts of routines to prepare for Easter, and that is very well done. The design of the characters, though, is almost overwhelmingly cute.

The faces on the bunnies look very rounded and full of smiles, much like a young child’s face. I’m sure that’s intentional, because the short seems like it was made for children. You get the impression when watching it that you are supposed to marvel and wonder at the magic of Easter. That’s easy to get when working in Santa’s Workshop, but it’s a little tougher for the bunnies.

That said, the processes in this short are well done. By that I mean the ways the animators thought up for various Easter treats to be created. We have chocolate bunnies being chiseled out of chocolate, eggs dropped from a group of hens into a boiling pot, pain being applied by tails, brushes and other ways. All of this shows you the different things the bunnies do to make Easter baskets.

You can’t help but smile while watching this short, because everyone in it is smiling as well. There is no story or conflict to speak of, as it’s very much an “assembly line” sort of cartoon, showing us how things are made. That’s where I think it falls down. If there had been some sort of backup in the works or an issue with the production, it would have made this short much more interesting.

As it stands, Funny Little Bunnies is the type of thing that young children would really enjoy, but it lacks the sophistication or storytelling style of the better Silly Symphonies. That said, around Easter time, watch this with your kids and have a blast.

1 comment:

The Silly Symphonies are now firmly rooted in a story-book world and there's two types. There's the retelling a classic tale or there's the insight into a story land with tons of inventive gags. This is the latter.

I like this one more than I should. By all means I should find it too cute and be put off. But I love it! One thing that helps is that singing aside, (and check out the lyrics - they're terrible!) there are no cutesy annoying voices or a character you're supposed to pity. It's just constant music, movement, bounce and perfect synchronisation in a constant stream of visual ideas.

There's not an ounce of cynicism or a hint of being tongue in cheek - even when the cuteness gets really ridiculous. And the cute levels do get REALLY ridiculous – the bunnies take their paint right from the rainbow and one rabbit prints love hearts onto the eggs with his buttocks!!